Hurry up! There is murder at Herriman Avenue, Jamaica. The telephone receiver is off the hook and I can hear terrible screams and groans. Send the police department down quick.”
That was the breathless message that Lieutenant Louis Keppel of the Jamaica police precinct received shortly after midnight exactly one hundred years ago, on July 31, 1921. The voice was coming from a frantic telephone operator.
The Winter Garden Theatre was home to the original Broadway production of Cats from 1982 until the production closed in 2000. But about 50 years before the creepy human cats appeared on stage, the theater was famous for its real cats. Cat mascots, that is.
Thomas Wood was one of the many feline tenants of 290 Washington Street, a large, six-story brick factory building on the northwest corner of Washington and Chamber streets. Originally the pet cat of a dye maker at the factory, he made his home on the third floor, which was occupied by the American Wood Decorating Machine Company.
Join me on Wednesday, June 9, at 7 p.m. (ET), for a virtual trip back in time to explore New York City’s history via amazing stories about theatrical cats, flying feline mascots, famous hotel cats, and other fabulous felines that made the news headlines in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Harry Cat was a large and lazy solid white cat. He lived with a woman named Mrs. Lester and his twin feline brothers, Tom and Dick, in a wood frame boarding house at 8 Remsen Street. On December 10, 1899, he saved the 65-year-old house from burning down.
